Dance Review | Mediterranean Nights is a Stunning Showcase of World Dance at SOhO in Santa Barbara

SOhO was bathed in the warm glow of dance and music from the Middle East, Turkey, Greece, Spain, Hawai’i, and India on Tuesday evening, December 17. The show was a fundraiser for a second production of Alexandra King’s magnificent Seraglio: A Folkloric Ballet, which was performed at the Arlington last spring. King’s goal is to raise funds to produce Seraglio again in Santa Barbara, then take it to Los Angeles, and then on the road to Las Vegas. To be sure, Seraglio is a ballet that deserves to be appreciated far and wide.

Seraglio is set in Istanbul, sometime in the late 19th to early 20th centuries, during the late Ottoman Empire. At that time, before the massacres and expulsions of Greeks and Armenians from Turkey, Istanbul was a culturally diverse metropolis in which Turks, Greeks, Jews, and Armenians lived side by side in relative peace, while keeping to their separate communities. King’s Seraglio is a three-act folkloric ballet about a Turkish girl and a Greek boy who fall in love, despite their cultural and class differences, and decide to risk everything to be together. It is the same theme that is expressed in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. Said King, “Seraglio is presented from a fresh perspective, and in a new style – folk dance, thus disrupting the status quo of dance theater as a European art.”

(You can view the Seraglio trailer on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/d6ftammTwIw )

The story of how Mediterranean Nights evolved is interesting and instructive. King applied for numerous grants to produce her next Seraglio, but was sadly rejected from all but the Santa Barbara Foundation, who granted her funds. She explained that two well-known funding agencies, who are famous for funding a number of arts projects in Santa Barbara, said to her, “What you are doing is not art; only ballet is art!” King is a person who sees obstacles as opportunities, so she came up with the idea of creating a World Dance show, an idea that has been her dream for many years, which would also be a fundraiser for her next production of Seraglio.

King put out a call to the dancers who had been in Seraglio, as well as musicians of the UCSB Middle East Ensemble, her own students, and other dance companies, asking for volunteers to perform in this $85-per-plate, dinner-theater fundraiser. Said King, “The response was overwhelming. Everyone wanted to help.” And so this very sweet showcase of many cultures was born.

The opening number was a Greek folk dance, “Hasapiko,” performed by Gavin Martinez and Zia Zografos, who play the lovers in Seraglio, Minos and Yasemin. These two exceptional dancers are grassroots performers. Martinez has been folk dancing in the Greek Church since the age of 5, and competed in numerous Greek dance competitions. He has been performing at the famous Greek restaurant at the Ventura Harbor (called “The Greek”), serving, bartending, and performing with the famous Dancing Greeks at the restaurant. Zografos grew up dancing with her mother, the well-known, multi-faceted dancer Yasemin Zografos. “I was dancing in my mom’s belly when she was pregnant, and I grew up dancing at the Renaissance Faire,” said Zia. “It’s in my blood!”

The show featured a number of colorful group dances. Some of my favorites were a Lebanese debke performed by members of the UCSB Middle East Ensemble, traditional and contemporary Hawai’ian dances by Hula Anyone, two Fiesta favorites by Flamenco! Santa Barbara – Sevillanas and Moretangos, and a Bollywood piece by Dance Ojai. King’s academy students, who are on her pro track to becoming professional belly dancers, performed a beautifully-synchronized veil dance to “Bir Demet Yasemin,” a recording by the famous singer and Oud player, the late John Bilezikjian. Bilezikjian was beloved by folk dancers and belly dancers all over the U.S., and he was featured in many Hollywood films, including Lawrence of Arabia. I once interviewed him for Folk Dance Scene Magazine, and learned that he grew up in a large family in Los Angeles in which Turkish, Greek, and Armenian were spoken.

Between the group numbers were solos by professional belly dancers, including a tribute to the late, great Egyptian dancer Samia Gamal, performed by Devilla, from Los Angeles, who plays a Turkish street dancer in Seraglio.

One of my favorites was a solo by the up-and-coming male belly dancer, Luca Zomboy. It is refreshing that we are seeing an increasing number of male solo belly dancers, and Luca is an amazingly creative and innovative example. Originally a student of King’s, he has since moved to New York City, where he is highly sought after and is constantly performing. He came back to Santa Barbara to perform for this fundraiser.

The highlight of the solos for me was the final performance by Zia Zografos, who performed a belly dance sequence in the traditional Greek style to a Greek folk song, followed by a highly technical drum solo. The drum solo is the section of a belly dance set in which the dancer shows off their virtuosity in performing isolations and fast hip actions, superimposing chest ‘pops and locks’ on top of fast hip shimmies. Zia performed this technical virtuosity beautifully, making it look easy! Such layering of movements on the body is as difficult to master as some of the highly technical moves in ballet.

One stark difference between western dancers and “ethnic” dancers is that most ballet dancers choose ballet because their parents put them in classes when they were young, whereas kids who grow up to become ethnic dancers often grew up dancing within their families and communities, where dance and music are part of life. As I wrote about in my review of Noches de Tango at SoHo, presented by the Juarez family from Argentina, I am particularly drawn to dancing families. Zia comes from a dancing family, and it shows in her absolutely natural way of performing and relating to the music.

Another absolute highlight of the show was the musical interlude performed by Jim Grippo and Alexis Story Crawshaw. Grippo is a master qanun (‘ka-noon’) player, a world-class performing and recording artist, soloist with the UCSB Middle East Ensemble for 30 years, and UCSB faculty member. Crawshaw is a composer, media artist, and featured singer across California, with two doctorates in cross-disciplinary art and music. These two artists definitely need to be seen and appreciated more widely. Listening to them made me want to get up on stage and shower them with money in the Turkish-Greek-Balkan tradition!

In the U.S., we segregate dance in our minds and funding practices into “dance,” which includes ballet, modern, jazz, and maybe hip hop, and “ethnic dance,” which is everything else. According to King, and other dancers whom I know, there needs to be more inclusiveness in the funding and academic worlds to support major, technical, professional dance genres other than ballet, modern, and jazz. “There is so much cultural diversity in the U.S. that funding should be more available to dance styles that are representative of the various communities we have,” said King.

In San Francisco there is a World Dance Festival in which companies representing a wide range of cultural genres audition to perform in a festival that spans three weekends at the end of each summer. King’s dream is to create a sister venue for a World Dance Festival in Santa Barbara. She said, “We need a company class for world dance training. We need funding to train world class world dancers.”

And why not, Santa Barbara? We certainly have a wealth of dance teachers in this area who have lived, studied, and performed in a wide variety of countries, with professional ensembles in those countries, who have a wealth of knowledge they are ready to share. Let’s think about this possibility.

For information about classes, performances, and dancers for hire, please visit Alexandra King’s website, alexandraking.com.